Accomplished
So far, I’ve been working on setting up a development environment for the XIAO ESP32S3 that works on both macOS and Windows. We have decided to move forward with the Espressif-IDF (Espressif-IoT Development Framework), given that Espressif Systems is the company that makes the ESP32 and there is extensive amounts of support online through documentation and forums.
There is a Docker image that is built and published by Espressif on their official Docker Hub account. This makes building ESP32 code seamless across different operating systems. I wrote the Dev Container configuration file for the ESP32 which uses the Espressif image. However, I personally develop on macOS, and have found that the flashing process specifically is easier to do locally, given that Docker spins up a Linux VM and does not run on the macOS kernel. Windows can bypass this with WSL and USB passthrough, on the other hand.
We accomplished writing a simple program that flashes an onboard LED via simple GPIO set calls and delays. The program also launches an additional thread that prints to a serial monitor via UART. This basic multithreading program was possible due to FreeRTOS running on the board after being flashed (it is the default with Espressif-IDF).
Progress / Schedule
According to the gant chart, I completed my part of the “FreeRTOS Setup for ESP32/STM32”. However, “Bluetooth Communication Implementation” is still work-in-progress, and I could not fully finish it this week, so it will carry on to next week.
Most of my time spent went into setting up development environments for microcontrollers, and figuring out the correct software dependencies for our project. This video in particular was pretty helpful in getting set up for macOS. Some code, along with our PCB schematics/layout are in this GitHub repository. Overall, I’m mostly on track. I don’t have an official task for next week, which gives me some slack for Bluetooth communication. I’ll also help Caitlyn with STM32 code.
Deliverables / Next Steps
Next week, I will:
- Finish pushing some of the ESP32 setup code to our GitHub repo.
- Start implementing with wireless communication with 2 microcontrollers.